microsoft Archives - The Pursuit of Quality

Update on the Office365 trauma

If you’ve been following my trauma with Office365, then you’ll remember I was less than impressed yesterday at discovering two key problems when I signed-up.

1. The agreement was for a year. Whoops. I specifically clicked ‘pay monthly’ and presumed that was a month-to-month arrangement. No. I should have looked closer.

2. I opted for the £15/month version of the email service so that I could get a licensed copy of Office Professional — you could, just not for Mac. The service had the temerity to tell me to go and buy a copy of Office for Mac 2011 if I’d like to use it with Office365. Errrr, no. You’re Microsoft. You’re one brand as far as I’m concerned, so sort it out.

I’m pleased to report that they’ve responded to my cancellation request but unfortunately there is no way they can do this by pressing a button. At least, not yet. They need to speak to me first. And they’re now closed until 9am tomorrow. So I’ll do that.

Meanwhile I had my Google Apps account for The Pursuit of Quality live within about 5 minutes last night.

Ah dear, I didn’t have a good experience with Office365 this evening

The Pursuit of Quality is now ‘live’, albeit in ‘beta’ (that is, I’m not talking about it on my other channels as yet). This means that email is now arriving and I think I need a dedicated email bucket so I can keep things separate.

I don’t like having all my email in one box. For me, it makes it difficult to focus. I have a Google Apps account for personal and another for Mobile Industry Review.

I’ve been itching to try out Microsoft’s all new Office365 service and this evening I sat down and created an account. I went for the E3 plan — £15/month — that came with Office Professional Plus. That was quite attractive as it’s basically every single Office app. Yes please, I thought.

I’ve got Office for Mac standard version, but I thought £15/month for both the standard 25GB account and a monthly license for all the Office apps was genius.

But.

And there is a but.

I thought I was signing up for a month-to-month term. It’s only when I completed the transaction that I noticed it was a 1-year agreement. Whoops.

That, I can deal with, given the fact you’re getting the Office suite included.

The next problem? I went to download the Office apps (or, get the license key to unlock Office Professional) and got a bit of a shock. It’s for PC-only. The whole deal is PC-only. The control panel instructed me to go out and buy a copy of Office for Mac!

Right. No, that’s not acceptable.

So I looked for the cancel button. Cancel, cancel, cancel. My expectations were totally blown.

And..arse, there’s no cancel button.

So I created a support ticket. I hope they’re efficient, I hope they don’t make me commit to a whole year.

And goodness me, how wrong could I have been? I just assumed..

I think it’s over to Google Apps for The Pursuit of Quality email hosting then.

Microsoft: I tried!